“Your what?” said the skipper.  “It’s a dawg, Mrs. Bunker, an’ I won’t have no dawgs aboard my craft.”

“Bill,” said Mrs. Bunker, “fetch my box up again.”

“Leastways,” the captain hastened to add, “unless it’s any friend of yours, Mrs. Bunker.”

“It’s chaperoning me,” said Matilda; “it wouldn’t be proper for a lady to go a v’y’ge with two men without somebody to look after her.”

“That’s right, Sam,” said the watchman sententiously.  “You ought to know that at your age.”

“Why, we’re looking after her,” said the simple-minded captain.  “Me an’ Bill.”

“Take care Bill don’t cut you out,” said the watchman in a hoarse whisper, distinctly audible to all.  “He’s younger nor what you are, Sam, an’ the wimmen are just crazy arter young men.  ’Sides which, he’s a finer man altogether.  An’ you’ve had one wife a’ready, Sam.”

“Cast off!” said the skipper impatiently.  “Cast off!  Stand by there, Bill!”

“Ay, ay!” said Bill, seizing a boat-hook, and the lines fell into the water with a splash as the barge was pushed out into the tide.

Mrs. Bunker experienced the usual trouble of landsmen aboard ship, and felt herself terribly in the way as the skipper divided his attentions between the tiller and helping Bill with the sail.  Meantime the barge had bothered most of the traffic by laying across the river, and when the sail was hoisted had got under the lee of a huge warehouse and scarcely moved.

“We’ll feel the breeze directly,” said Captain Codd.  “Then you’ll see what she can do.”

As he spoke, the barge began to slip through the water as a light breeze took her huge sail and carried her into the stream, where she fell into line with other craft who were just making a start.

At a pleasant pace, with wind and tide, the Sir Edmund Lyons proceeded on its way, her skipper cocking his eye aloft and along her decks to point out various beauties to his passenger which she might otherwise have overlooked.  A comfortable supper was spread on the deck, and Mrs. Bunker began to think regretfully of the pleasure she had missed in taking up barge-sailing so late in life.

Greenwich, with its white-fronted hospital and background of trees, was passed.  The air got sensibly cooler, and to Mrs. Bunker it seemed that the water was not only getting darker, but also lumpy, and she asked two or three times whether there was any danger.

The skipper laughed gaily, and diving down into the cabin fetched up a shawl, which he placed carefully round his fair companion’s shoulders.  His right hand grasped the tiller, his left stole softly and carefully round her waist.

“How enjoyable!” said Mrs. Bunker, referring to the evening.

“Glad you like it,” said the skipper, who wasn’t.  “Oh, how pleasant to go sailing down the river of life like this, everything quiet and peaceful, just driftin’”—­